LONDON (MINEWEB) -
Far be it for me to argue with a Nobel prizewinning economist, members of Congress and however many thousands have signed the White House petition to mint it, but this whole idea of a trillion dollar platinum coin is ludicrous.
It would have to constitute the most gigantic fraud ever perpetuated by a government and probably make the U.S. dollar and the U.S. economy the laughing stock of the world. If anything, it would trigger a huge investment surge into gold and silver as all faith in government-created money would evaporate!
Firstly – why platinum? It is based on a legal technicality allowing the U.S. to mint platinum coins of any face value. However, given that $1 trillion dollars worth of platinum at current prices represents around 8 or 9 times the amount of platinum ever mined throughout history, a trillion dollar face value coin would have to bring any kind of money creation into even more disrepute than it already is.
I believe that whoever initially promoted the idea did so as an economic joke and has to be rolling on the floor laughing that so many have even contemplated it. Why respectable news outlets (even Mineweb) have given any kind of credence to the idea defeats me. It defies all economic logic in virtually every respect. Its only purpose seems to me to be to enable the U.S. government to carry on spending money, and increase its debt, ad infinitum with no checks and balances ever being made in Congress again. And with the politicians’ propensity to spend money the government currently doesn’t have anyway, spending would just accelerate and accelerate. It could only end in tears!
Grant Williams – a Singapore-based commentator who deserves an even greater following than he already achieves with his ‘Things that make you go hmm’ newsletter – puts his views on the trillion dollar coin idea succinctly –
“But what the hell is this all about? Are we seriously talking about producing a magical coin that will solve the debt problem? Folks, it looks like that’s the world we now live in—a world inhabited by ‘journalists’ who actually spend their time writing articles with headlines such as:
Can a $1 Trillion Coin End Debt Ceiling Crisis?
Allow me. No.
Read More at mineweb.com . By Lawrence Williams.
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